This week, a simple definition of "MISSION" came to mind - an acrostic of the word. It comes out like this:
The Master
Is
Sending
Servants
Into
Other
Nations.
This statement actually has four components:
1. Who is the Master?
Of course, it is our Lord Jesus Christ - the Messiah, the Only Begotten Son of God, entering human flesh by being born of a virgin, fulfilling the plan of the ages for the redemption of mankind through His death and resurrection. Being both Creator and Savior, He deserves our full allegiance and worship.
2. To say that He "Is Sending" suggests that this is a current process - even now, today. Most people understand that the Bible word for this is "Apostle," or "sent one."
In the larger Church right now there is, sadly in my opinion, an increased interest in titles. One that is being claimed is that of Apostle. However, it is being wrongly applied as a title conferred upon men of great religious attainment or authority, leaders of large ministries who evidently feel that the title gives them due recognition or enhances their leadership authority. In the New Testament sense, the term "Apostle" simply referred to those who were sent out, by Christ, to preach the Gospel. As it applies today, I believe that many whom we have named "Missionaries" are actually Apostles. The truth is, Jesus didn't stop the sending when the last of the Twelve, John "the Beloved," died on the Isle of Patmos. The Master is still sending today.
3. The second "S" in our word "mission" refers to the most appropriate title of all - "Servant."
Do we expect to rise above our Master? He was called "servant," and so were His disciples. Today, as taught by Jesus Himself, we reject titles such as "Father," "Rabbi," or, for that matter, "Reverend" (Matthew 23:8-10) - we have but one Father, one Rabbi, and only He is to be revered. We do accept the designation "Minister" which is just another word for "servant," and the Biblical title of "Pastor," which describes the task of the humble shepherd caring for his flock. Self-interest subtly sneaks in to deal a death blow to humility, and religious leaders of our day are no less prone to pride than they were during Jesus' sojourn among the Scribes and Pharisees of the first century.
Furthermore, servanthood suggests total obedience to one Master. Jesus made it clear - we cannot serve two masters, disciples must decide, and give total, unquestioning submission to Him.
4. The final part of our statement indicates that these "Servants" who are "Sent," travel to "Other Nations."
I know the term "mission" has been watered down and applied to many other enterprises. Businesses have a mission, the military sends bombing missions, and even individuals are encouraged to declare their personal mission. In the church we talk about "Home Missions," and support "Home Missionaries," and in an even more general sense, we have often been told, "You can be a missionary right here at home, to your family, your neighbor across the street, and in your work-place." However, we're going to hold to our definition. Yes, all Christians are called to be "witnesses," but not all are commissioned to be missionaries.
An oft asked question regarding this is, "There is much work to do right here at home, why is it necessary to send missionaries to other nations?"
A little later on we will recount the history of one of the earliest western missionaries, a British citizen who spent over 40 years in India. Right now, listen to what he wrote more than 200 years ago in response to the critics of his own day who raised this same objection:
"It has been objected that there are multitudes in our own nation, and within our immediate spheres of action, who are as ignorant as the South-Sea savages, and that therefore we have work enough at home, without going into other countries.
"That there are thousands in our own land as far from God as possible, I readily grant, and that this ought to excite us to ten-fold diligence in our work. And in attempts to spread divine knowledge amongst them is a certain fact; but that it ought to supersede all attempts to spread the gospel in foreign parts seems to want proof.
"Our own countrymen have the means of grace, and may attend on the word preached if they choose it. They have the means of knowing the truth, and faithful ministers are placed in almost every part of the land, whose spheres of action might be much extended if their congregations were but more hearty and active in the cause: but with them the case is widely different, who have no Bible, no written language (which many of them have not) no ministers, no good civil government, nor any of those advantages which we have.
"Pity therefore, humanity, and much more Christianity, call loudly for every possible exertion to introduce the gospel amongst them."
Certainly, if this early missionary's point was defensible at the beginning of the 19th century, it is even more so at the beginning of the 21st. Just think about the opportunities Americans have to hear and respond to the Gospel - in the US there are:
Over 250 Christian denominations,
More than 230,000 Christian congregations,
1,700 Christian radio stations, and
285 Christian television stations.
Add to that the current fact that already 31,250,000 Americans have seen the real life depiction of the core story of the Gospel, the crucifixion of Jesus.
The fact of the matter is, over 90% of all living Gospel preachers are preaching to less than 10% of the world's population, right here at home.
From a Biblical point of view, it is very clear that Jesus intended the Gospel to be spread throughout the world when He said, "go and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19) and "you will be my witnesses . . . to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8) Let's remember too, that when the Bible uses the word "Gentiles", it is referring to the "nations." For example, Isaiah 42:6,7:
a) "I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness."
b) The New Testament prophet Simeon understood this when he met Mary and Joseph as they brought their infant son into the temple. He said, "For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel." (Luke 2:30-32)
c) Jesus Himself reiterated this universalism:
"Here is my servant whom I have chosen, the one I love, in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations. He will not quarrel or cry out; no one will hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he leads justice to victory. In his name the nations will put their hope." (Matthew 12:18-20)
d) The Early Church preachers understood the task when they proclaimed, "This is what the Lord has commanded us: `I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.'" (Acts13:47) which was taken directly from Isaiah 49:6.
e) Paul, in his letter to the Roman church asks a couple of probing questions:
"Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith." (Romans 3:29, 30)
"What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath -- prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory -- even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?" (Romans 9:22-24)
f) Even the Psalmist cried out, "I will praise you among the nations, O Lord." (Psalm 18:49)
Many students of history trace the beginning of the modern missions movement to the person alluded to earlier, William Carey. To the best of my ability, I would like to recount his story.
William Carey was born August 17th, 1761, in the little village of Paulerspury in the center of England. His father, a hard working but poor weaver, brought his family up in a small thatched cottage which housed his loom along with five children, two parents, and a grandmother. When William was 6 years old, his father received appointment as school master and moved his family into the school-house where William lived until he left home. During his youth, his parents were troubled with his frequent swearing, lying and running around with an undesirable group of mischief-makers. Partly for that reason, at the age of 14, William was sent to the hamlet of Hackleton, nine miles away, where he became a shoemaker's apprentice. During his apprenticeship under Clarke Nichols, William worked with a senior apprentice named John Warr, who was a dedicated Christian.
In addition to this influence during his apprenticeship, something took place which also provided a turning point for William. Perhaps a small matter to some, he was caught trying to cheat his employer by switching a bad coin for a good one, and then lying about it. He was found out, and as he would write later, "I was therefore exposed to shame, reproach, and inward remorse, which preyed upon my mind for a considerable time. I at this time sought the Lord, perhaps much more earnestly than ever, but with shame and fear. I was quite ashamed to go out, and never, till I was assured that my conduct was not spread over the town, did I attend a place of worship."
Because of this experience, and the faithful witness of his fellow apprentice, William agreed to attend a prayer meeting at church. The war of 1776 wasn't going well for England, so King George III, hoping for divine reversal, proclaimed a day of national prayer and fasting for Sunday, February 10, 1779. The preacher that day spoke from Hebrews 13:13, urging his listeners to give their lives to Christ. As he quoted his text, "Let us go forth to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach," the words spoke directly to 17-year-old William, and he felt that he should break away from the church of England. Soon after that, he was baptized and became a member of the local church. In time, he began to do some preaching and served as pastor in nearby Baptist churches.
While serving his first church in the small village of Moulton, William attended a Baptist Association meeting in Nottingham in 1784, when a once-a-month prayer meeting was set up to pray "for the effusion of the Holy Spirit of God." Two years later, at another such meeting, held at Northampton, an incident occurred which helped set the course for Carey's career.
The chairman, Dr. John C. Ryland, the Pastor who had baptized Carey, invited the younger brethren in the group to propose a subject for discussion. At first no one spoke up, so William Carey made the suggestion that there be a discussion about “whether the command given to the Apostles, to teach all nations, was not obligatory on all succeeding ministers to the end of the world, seeing that the accompanying promise was of equal extent.” Immediately the aged chairman shouted out the rebuke, “You are a miserable enthusiast for asking such a question. Certainly nothing can be done before another Pentecost, when an effusion of miraculous gifts, including the gift of tongues, will give effect to the commission of Christ as at first.”
In response to that stunning setback, Carey wrote, and later published an 87 page book to which he gave the lengthy title, "An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, in which the Religious State of the Different Nations of the World, the Success of Former Undertakings, and the Practicability of Further Undertakings, are considered." It was later published in 1792, after Carey had become Pastor of the Baptist church at Leicester.
That same year, when the ministers’ meeting came round on May 31st, Carey seized his opportunity. The place was Nottingham, from which, nearly nine years previously, the invitation to prayer had gone forth. During this meeting Carey preached from Isaiah 54:2, 3 - "Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left; your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities." While most of the contents of Carey's sermon have been lost, one set of phrases has been preserved and become one of the most often quoted sayings of the missionary movement:
When the service was over, Chairman Ryland offered no response to the message, and the ministers were leaving the meeting when Carey called out, “And are you, after all, going again to do nothing?”
Four months later, after a meeting on October 2, 1792, twelve ministers, a student, and a deacon met in the back-parlor of widow Wallis’ house in Kettering and began to lay a foundation for what later became known as the first missionary society. Then, during the meeting on January 10, 1793, Carey, now 32, along with John Thomas, an ordained minister and a medical evangelist, were appointed missionaries to “the East Indies for preaching the gospel to the heathen.” At first, Carey's wife, Dorothy, was unwilling to go, so he made plans to take his eight year old son, Felix, and leave his wife behind. However, by sailing date, June 13, 1793, Carey's wife had agreed to go as long as her sister would also go, so at Dover, the party of five adults and four children boarded a Danish ship, the "Krön Princessa Maria." William's father, by then a widower, when learning of the appointment exclaimed, "Is William mad?" to which William wrote in response, "To be devoted like a sacrifice to holy uses, is the great business of a christian, pursuant to these requisitions. I consider myself as devoted to the service of God alone, and now I am to realise my professions."
After surviving a five months sea voyage which included two violent storms, the missionary party arrived in India on November 14, 1793.
During the first several years, in addition to preaching at every opportunity, Carey was busy endeavoring to become self-sufficient so that money collected by the Missionary Society could be used to send missionaries to other lands. He also learned the language and translated the Bible. One of his children died, his wife gradually lost her mind; it was seven years before the first Hindu convert was baptized.
In one letter, Carey wrote to a friend, "When I left England, my hope of India’s conversion was very strong; but amongst so many obstacles, it would die, unless upheld by God. Well, I have God, and His Word is true. Though the superstitions of the heathen were a thousand times stronger than they are, and the example of the Europeans a thousand times worse; though I were deserted by all and persecuted by all, yet my faith, fixed on that sure Word, would rise above all obstructions and overcome every trial. God’s cause will triumph."
"There are grave difficulties on every hand," he wrote in another letter, "and more are looming ahead. Therefore we must go forward."
What apparently brought international attention and sympathy for his cause was the terrible setback of a fire in 1832. As a result, everything was destroyed - his massive polyglot dictionary, two grammar books, whole versions of the Bible, sets of type for 14 eastern languages, 1200 reams of paper, 55,000 printed sheets, and 30 pages of his Bengal dictionary. Gone was his complete library. "The work of years - gone in a moment," he whispered. However, rather than accept this as a defeat, Carey plodded on. "The loss is heavy," he wrote, "but as traveling a road the second time is usually done with greater ease and certainty than the first time, so I trust the work will lose nothing of real value. We are not discouraged, indeed the work is already begun again in every language. We are cast down but not in despair."
William Carey never returned to England, but stayed in India for 41 years until he died at age 73.
When all was said and done, he had translated the complete Bible into six languages, and portions of the Bible into 29 others. He had founded over 100 rural schools for the people of India. He had founded Serampore College, which is training ministers to this day. He introduced the concept of a savings bank to the farmers of India. He published the first Indian newspaper. He wrote dictionaries and grammars in five different languages. He so influenced the nation of India that, largely through his efforts, the practice of "sati" (wives being burned on the pyres of their dead husbands) was outlawed, along with religious infanticides and voluntary drownings in the Ganges river. Carey also opened a hospital for lepers after learning of the practice of burning lepers alive - their religion taught them that a violent end purifies the body and ensures transmigration into a healthy new existence - a natural death by disease would result in four successive births, and a fifth as a leper again.
And, most importantly, he launched the modern era of missions and laid the foundations for the modern science of missiology. One biographer, Mary Drewery, wrote: "The number of actual conversions attributed to him is pathetically small; the number indirectly attributable to him must be legion."
Now two hundred years have passed since William Carey first stepped upon Indian soil, and the task is still not complete.
When we look at the world from the perspective of what parts have not yet heard the message of the Gospel, we find them mostly located in a rectangular area or band which missions strategist Luis Bush called "the 10/40 window." This simply refers to the areas from west Africa to east Asia which fall between 10 degrees north to 40 degrees north of the equator.
The fact is, of the 55 least evangelized countries, 97% of their population lives within this 10/40 Window. Unless something changes soon, most of these unreached people will never hear the Gospel. Why? Open evangelism is difficult and even impossible in many 10/40 Window countries, and only about one and a quarter percent of Christian missions giving is going to missions work in the 10/40 Window.
Fully two-thirds of the world's population live in this area of the world, 95% of whom are unreached and unevangelized. Many have never heard the Gospel message even once.
Furthermore - eighty-five percent of those living in the 10/40 window are the poorest of the world's poor; there is significant religious opposition as three of the largest world religions (Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism) are centered in the 10/40 Window.
There's another version of the meeting when William Carey first presented his thesis that the Commission Jesus gave had not been retracted with the death of the Apostles. According to this story, at the 1786 "Particular Baptist" Association meeting, the leading pastor, Dr. Ryland, after hearing Carey's suggestion, cried out, "Young man, sit down: when God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine."
Could it be that much of the western church has cast its vote with Dr. Ryland, rather than with William Carey? Perhaps the former may be excused because he was brought up in a theology of extreme Calvinism, a theology which taught that God's sovereignty was absolute, with little or no room left for true freedom of choice. An all-powerful God would accomplish what He wanted - He certainly needed no help from finite man. On the other hand, William Carey had behind him the theology of none other than the Apostle Paul, the one who affirmed the mandate of missions with these words:
"Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?" (Romans 10:13-15)
So "mission" is: The Master Is Sending Servants Into Other Nations. May the Lord help us do our part.
1. In the acrostic of the word "mission," what do the letters stand for?
2. What is the danger of assigning titles to religious leaders? What two titles currently in use do we feel are acceptable, and why?
3. "There is much work to do right here at home, why is it necessary to send missionaries to other nations?"
4. What are some other arguments we can use for not limiting our Christian endeavors to our own country?
5. Do you think that films such as "The Passion of the Christ" are legitimate forms of preaching the Gospel?
6. What words of Jesus support the sending of missionaries to other lands?
7. What is the basic meaning of the word "Gentile," and what does this have to do with missions?
8. What is the name of the man often referred to as "The Father of Missions"?
9. For what set of phrases is he most famous?
10. What was the attitude of family members towards his leaving his homeland and going to India?
11. Why would "extreme Calvinism" be less than enthusiastic about the enterprise of missions?
12. What is meant by the "10/40" window, and why is this area important as a target for missions work?
